credulous at best, your desire to believe in angels in the hearts of women (look ma I unsexised Tool)

Tuesday, 16 October 2012

Women's Brains and Male Upper Body Strength

Stephen Jay Gould, a polemicist of science, who was recently hoisted on his own petard, wrote a book 'The Panda's Thumb' wherein one chapter was dedicated to women's brains, or the lack thereof when compared to men's. A woman called Maria Montessorri featured at the end of his essay. Gould writes of her:

She measured the circumference of children's heads in herschools and inferred that the best prospects had bigger brains. But she had no use for Broca's conclusions about women. She discussed Manouvrier's work at length and made much of his tentative claim that women, after proper correction of the data, had slightly larger brains than men. Women, she concluded, were intellectually superior, but men had prevailed heretofore by dint of physical force.

And Gould then went quoting her at length:

Since technology has abolished force as an instrument of power, the era of women may soon be upon us: "In such an epoch there will really be superior human beings, there will really be men strong in morality and in sentiment. Perhaps in this way the reign of women is approaching, when the enigma of her anthropological superiority will be deciphered. Woman was always the custodian of human sentiment, morality and honor."